Farm vs. Wild

 

For my extended experience, which I'll talk more about in a separate post, I wanted to go somewhere I was unfamiliar with and somewhere without any big tourist attractions. I went driving and ended up out in Leonard, which I had never been to before.

I flew my drone out there to see from an aerial perspective, and I wasn't initially struck by the beauty of the landscape by any means. What struck me most was seeing the stark contrast between the cultivated and green farmland and the brown, colorless wilderness side by side.

In this class, we've talked a lot about how our curated and polished gardens we often see in the city are not necessarily "natural" at all but have instead lost their wildness through human domestication. We talked about whether our sense of beauty is really attracted more to human's modification of nature or nature itself.

That is what I considered as I flew my drone and noticed the stark contrast between the deep and consistent green of the farmland compared to the dead grass in the uncultivated areas. In one glance, even an untrained eye can distinguish between the farm land and the wild.

I couldn't tell from my perspective what was usually grown on the farmland, but even in the winter it still looked just as green and healthy as ever. The color was beautiful, so even while I was aware of what we'd talked about in class about nature's beauty and such, I still felt more drawn towards the deep green that is the result of paid labor, fertilizer, and genetic engineering.

I don't think that instinct inside of me is "wrong" on a moral level. I think it's okay to appreciate humanity's creation and modification of nature, but it's important to distinguish between nature and the work of humans. I think you can appreciate both, but they are not the same thing.